Exhausting to play, exhausting to watch: at times during Andy Murray's 6-7, 7-6, 6-4, 7-6 quarter-final defeat of David Ferrer there was a sense of some fresh apogee of attritional, muscular baseline tennis being played out. At a venue more traditionally associated with freewheeling adventure this was a display of elite modern migraine tennis, two high intensity technicians pushing each other rather brutally to the limit. At times during an error-free display from Ferrer in the opening two sets it even looked as though Murray's best chance yet of reaching the final here was in serious danger of slipping away. Murray clung on as Ferrer's intensity levels dipped, as they had to. But in the end this was a victory that must have felt a little like being released from a set of thumb-screws.

Poor old Centre Court: overheated beneath its roof, kept awake by prime time TV tennis, and now subjected to this peculiar strain of engrossing agony: not the ragged theatricals of a Henman-era quarter final, but a gruellingly expert display of defence versus defence (and all played out in front of an approving Roy Hodgson). As the match crept past the three-hour mark there were heads in hands and chins propped on palms. The victory cheers for Murray at the end were hoarse, tinged with relief as much as triumphalism, as a rather drained evening crowd sloped off into the relief of a soothing drizzle.

It had been another muted start for Murray in front of a half-empty Centre Court and a royal box as yet unblessed by the balding progeny of a domineering family and his fragrant bride: in fact by the time Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf had turned up – joined by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge – Ferrer had already hustled into a businesslike 3-1 lead.

There has always been a degree of quiet machismo in Murray's tennis, a cocksureness in his own extreme physical conditioning. Ferrer, though, is a middleweight marvel in the age of the giants, possessed of a murderous broad-shouldered prowl that sees him approach each rally like a woodsman furiously scything away with his precision hatchet. For a while there was a suspicion of a miscalculation, even an arrogance, in Murray attempting to outdo Ferrer in the baseline drive-game (which is also Murray's game), offering the Spaniard the pace on the ball on which he thrives.

The result initially was a bravura master-class in bruising defensive tennis. At one point during the first set a member of the crowd shouted out "Play some attacking tennis!", one of the more tactically specific heckles you are likely to hear. But it was those moments of scurrying, stunningly nerveless retrieval that drew the initial gasps.

It was only at 5-3 down in the first set that Murray began to vary his game, introducing the degree of additional targeted aggression that has been notable under Ivan Lendl's instruction, and breaking back with an open-shouldered forehand winner that was both miraculous and a little flukey.

For a moment it looked as though his more varied tempo might assert itself. But Ferrer has been unflinching when it comes to tie-breaks here, winning three out of three in the early rounds. Murray, still slugging from the back, netted successive forehands to hand him the set.

At which point it looked as though Murray's attempts to out-grind the arch-grinder might have gone either way. He began to writhe a little under the pressure, screwing up his eyes, and looking a little pained by the tourniquet being applied from the opposite baseline. It was a pressure Murray had to resist and resist he did.

There was a scream of astonishment from the crowd when Ferrer finally missed a forehand to give Murray a break point at 5-4 down. In the next game Murray sprinted a combined total of at least 100 yards to make just a single point, sealed with a running backhand pass that appeared to involve the use of teleport. The second set tie break was taut, calculated tennis-athleticism of the highest order. A 22-stroke rally on the final point was played entirely from the back of the court, with Murray's greater adventure in striking long to the corners eventually rewarded.

Could Ferrer keep it up? At the start of the third set there was the first sight of a little tiredness as he threw away two break points . Murray took a service game to love for the first time to go 3-3, a lack of foot movement the first sign that the Alicante Animal might be wilting a little himself. Ferrer is not a player who wears a wilt well. Without that throttling intensity he lacks a definitive weapon, a boa constrictor without a death-grip.

Suddenly it was Murray punching the air, gripped with a puppyish energy and casting off the terrible constipation of the opening two sets. He took the third set with an ace that completely wrong-footed Ferrer, an unimaginable spectacle at the height of the Spaniard's earlier unrelenting excellence. Match point for Murray arrived with a carefree forehand winner that drew his loudest yelp of the night. The ace that won it was entirely out of kilter with the preceding three hours. Murray looked spent. Greater challenges await here, but perhaps nothing as uniquely gruelling as the iron grip of Ferrer.